Friday

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I had no idea this card existed until I came across it on the Canadian Blog Bottom Rung. As they put i...

"They have figured out that their customers generally order the same thing everyday and have created a card to make that process even easier. Now you don’t have to repeat those nonsensical incantations to the barista behind the counter in order to receive your drink of choice."

Thursday

Agency 2.0, Interaction Design and Renaissance PeopleBack to interaction designers. Here's a concept worth thinking about: many of them don't want to work for your ad agency. How do I know this? Because I talk to them daily. The most common response I get is, "Why would I want to work on a constant stream of microsites and promotions?" Interaction designers thrive on long-term project engagements. They yearn to sink their teeth into complex problems, wrapping their heads around how they can help solve them.

An agency environment that churns out digital program after program is less appealing -- especially when there are opportunities to go work with a start-up, a non-agency or even, perhaps, the future Googles of the world. In an industry built off of the copywriter-art director dynamic duo, it's time to think about talent in terms of "Renaissance people." Many interaction designers fit this bill.

Get Serious About the Intersection of Design + TechnologySo what's an agency to do? Case studies such as Nike +, Domino's Pizza configurator and Harley-Davidson's trip planner point to a future where interaction design plays a significant role.

We need to capitalize on the opportunities to move brands beyond typical marketing campaigns into more of a "micro-interaction" model. We can actually create models of engagement that are sustainable over time. This is where the opportunities lie and we have to get serious about it if we want to attract the talent I'm describing.

Some agencies are seeing the writing on the wall. Crispin, for example, sponsored the conference for interaction designers. A recruiting opportunity? Perhaps. But one thing is for sure -- moving a brand forward will be measured by the interactions a person has with it and technology plus design will play a critical role. That's brand 2.0 in an interactive world.Micro-interactionsMicro-interactions are the everyday exchanges that we have with a product, brand and service. Each one, in and of itself, seems insignificant. But combined they define how we feel about a product, brand or service at a gut emotional level. In the case of Google, each time it helps us find what we are looking for, view a map, send an e-mail or connect with a friend, it deposits a positive impression in our memory banks. Kevin Roberts expresses a similar sentiment in his book "Lovemarks":

"Lovemarks transcend brands. They deliver beyond your expectations of great performance. Like great brands, they sit on top of high levels of respect -- but there the similarities end.

Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can't live without. Ever."

All You Need Is Love?Sounds all syrupy sweet and romantic right? Who wouldn't want to have a "lovemark brand?" And who wouldn't want to work with one? Only there's a bit of trouble in paradise here. Back to the example of Google, and maybe even more appropriately the whole host of 2.0 web applications that are shifting consumer behavior, there is a core discipline that is fueling this movement: interaction designers.

Call them information architects, experience designers or Jack or Jane -- they are the design geeks who love to sweat the details. They care about "micro-interactions" and toil away at the building blocks of what actually results in a "lovemark" in the end. We love to use applications that help us do things like plan vacations, find old friends and share our passions with the world. The ad industry has made a big mistake in the past by thinking technology was for geeks. Technology, in fact, is a love affair.

A very interesting video promoting Charles leadbetter's new book "We Think". It touches on the fact that in the past you were waht you owned; but today we are moving towards a world where you are what you share.

I have commented previously on how I believe that the biggest opportunity for ad agencies since the invention of the alphabet is digital - but we have just begun to really understand this opportunity ourselves.

To take advantage of this opportunity we need to begin by educating ourselves, then we educate our clients, then we support our clients with educating their entire organizations. Fallon Planning has begun to educate its agency and not just with a presentation but by using the social media to share the presentation across the network.

On March 26th, 2008, Aki Spicer, strategic planner at Fallon Worldwide, conducted a presentation about social media, using social media, live, across a range of social web touchpoints including Fallon Planning Blog on Blogger, Yahoo! Live, NetVibes, Plannersphere on Ning, and Facebook.

This is unbelievable. I can't even begin to discuss what my favourite parts of this video are. A seven-year old stole his grandma's Durango, and hit a whole bunch of shit. Some of my favourites lines are:

Found on Flickr in Lynetter's interesting snippets. The first quote has never been more true than in todays world. I only hear news if it shows up in the Globe & Mail I read everyday, or if it rises to the top within Digg or is sent to me by Google reader.

I no longer watch or seek the news, I read and learn about the news that finds me.

Culture jamming is an interesting phenomenon. Over the past decade, a number of examples of culture jamming have surfaced across the world (some of my favorites below). To the normal person, culture jamming is nothing more than a defaced billboard, an advertisement with some ironic graffiti or any OOH piece that has been "tampered" with.

What is culture jamming? Wikipedia defines it as:

"To create a contrast between corporate or mass media images and the realities or perceived negative side of the corporation or media. This is done symbolically, with the "detournement" of pop iconography."

One culture jammer (who is also in the industry) Ji Lee, Brand director of Droga5, has launched an interesting campaign to allow consumers to take control of OOH media.

In a great article from the Wired Blog, writer Jenna Wortham describes Lee's techniques and motivations for becoming a jammer:

"Five years ago, fed up with the corporate grind of his gig as art director at a global ad agency, Lee decided to leave the professional world and begin hacking his environment with graffiti. "The kinds of ads being produced were very dull and boring," said Lee in a phone conversation. "It was frustrating to see these ads taking up space all over the city, so I wanted to do something about it as a creative person and a consumer."

Lee decided to create 30,000 cartoon thought bubbles and place them on every ad he could find in the NY city area. That way, any consumer with a felt pen could instantly add their thoughts and change the meaning of the execution.

He called the effort, Project Bubble, and has since produced a book with his favorite, consumer generated executions.

What I like about this "campaign" is that it puts ads in the hands of consumer and allows them to change them however they want. How many times have you walked by an ad and thought, "Are you kidding me? This is the best they could come up with?"

A lot of cool ideas can come from letting consumers change the meaning of your executions and messages. With Droga5 leading the jamming charge, I'm sure we will see some mainstream executions encouraging these conversations very soon.

That's the lengh of time this guy - Nick White - spent trapped in an elevator in New York in 1999. The time-lapse video, which has become a web-sensation, shows how Nick spent his time in the elevator for every minute of his stay (don't worry...it's only 3 minutes).

I was trapped in an elevator in NY once for about an hour and it was unbearable. I can't imagine 41. Unreal.

According to Nintendo, the average Wii sits on the store shelf for approximately one hour before it is bought. One hour.

It's easy to understand how Nintendo made it to the top of the pack based on sales like that. I'd love to see a comparrision with the iPhone, Rock Band or other hot consumer items to understand the correlation of shelf life (speed) and sales.

The demand is mostly in America as Japan and Europe have leveled off in terms of overall "Wii" craziness.

Sunday

Found this new Nike spot on Adrants. I don't know how I feel about it yet but I'm assuming that the new Nike shoe they are promoting is made from recycled materials. It's a bit freaky but watching the next one might shed some light on the campaign.

A few ad blogs have been writing about this fake / real internal Leo advertisement about a new agency dress code.

A few of us had a chat around the ambiguity of the agency dress code. We always joke about people coming to an interview wearing a tie (...I did...) but find that on any day you could find a person wearing flip flops, shorts and a battered T (with a hat) or a person dressed to the 9's in a full suit (sans tie).

There is no real "code" but I wouldn't mind an ad like this being sent out to the office!

Create a site that encourages users to upload their mobile videos to a specific theme - music. Piece together those videos using one of the world's top directors, Spike Lee, and push that user generated video out to the masses.

Nokia wants to shift perceptions about their video-capable cell phones. Currently, we don't think of video on our cellular devices as worth while. It's grainy, there is no memory and the quality is just plain terrible.

How can Nokia make consumers feel differently? By encouraging to use them and give them a chance to have a feature film created with their shots.

The site is simple, incorporates video (a must for this campaign) and is easy to use. I'm very interested to see the number of submissions and I'm excited for the final product.

If you haven't heard of "iPod's Dirty Secret" you should check it out below. The video was created a few years ago in response to Neistat brothers horrible call with Apple about his defunct iPod battery.

Essentially, the customer service rep told him that he only had once choice - to buy a new iPod because the replacement battery for the one he had purchased was just as expensive.

In response to this horrible policy, the Neistat brothers did something simple. They made a video and launched a website. Oh, and they also defaced every Apple ad that they could find in New York City with their tease message and URL.

Although the site is down, the video and stenciling was highly effective. Over the year, the video received thousands of views and tens of thousands of people visited the site.

If Apple had been another company, their response most likely would have been a lawsuit.

But the brilliant folks at Apple did something nobody expected - they agreed and changed their return policy. If one of you're battery's stopped working, just call Apple and they'll send you a new iPod - free of charge. No questions asked.

It's amazing to see how effectively a negative PR campaign can be turned into a positive one by some logical, corporate thinking.

A couple of hours ago, I was watching TV and came across the following (relatively new) spot from Sprint:

I like and hate this spot for a few reasons. First off, I like it because it got my attention. Anytime a new CEO puts himself in an ad I usually think, "Oh God, this is going to be bad...and I can't wait to blog it." But Dan is honest and straightforward in this spot.

Sprint has to change and they know it. Why not make things easier for their consumers and create one, $99 plan that covers everything - from GPS to texting. Give me one bill no matter what I do. I like the sound of that.

What made me jump about this spot, though, was the final frame. After the Sprint logo, Dan's email address appears - "dan@sprint.com". I actually shouted, "Did he just put his corporate email on his TV spot?" Well no, but yes.

After doing some digging, I found a few people who emailed Dan and got an auto response back from Sprint saying that he would get in touch with them if he needed to (yea right).

What gets me about this tactic is the allusion of change. As a company, you either embrace the web or you don't. Don't start a blog just to "get one out there" but delete negative comments posted about you. Address them in the blogosphere and gain the credibility that you've never had.

A full article, including the auto-response as well as some other fun musings about this spot, can be found here.

When we think of McDonalds, we think of bad food (that is delicious) and a cut-and-dry business model that produces the same food time and time again.

The visual provides us with how many marketers and agencies develop strategies. Not though target insights, but through the latest digital trends.

How many times have you talked about wanting a "viral" video? Or creating an application for Facebook so that it could go viral? Or creating a strong presence on LinkedIn to generate leads for your brand?

I know that in my day to day life, it's almost all we talk about - The next trend or the next big thing. It's important to know how things are changing but it's more important to know when to jump on the bandwagon and when to simply watch it drive by.

Over the next few days, Adjoke is going to be posting...a lot. Our hope is to gain a large number of unique visits in a short time.

It's a test, of sorts, to prove that in blogging, one of the main factors of readership is frequency of posts. Want 100 unique visits starting from scratch? Post 10 times and Digg them all and you've got a decent shot of getting there in under a few hours.

Want more than that? That's where things get tricky.

Respected blogs and bloggers like Seth Godin or Valleywag receive thousands of unique visits each day. During some of their busier months, they can get well over 1 million visits. How to they do it?

First off, they make a promise with their readers and keep it - they post at least once a day. (Valleywag posts at least 15 times).

There is nothing worse than going back to a blog after a week only to read the exact same post. We all have our excuses - things were busy at work that week, other stuff got in the way - but if you want a consistent audience you've only got to do one thing - post.